Julia's Hope

by Leisha Kelly

  “That’s right. An’ it ain’t up to Albert. He might be thinkin’ he’ll have to fix things for me. He’s a good’un, he is. He’d sell his right shoe fer me. But he ain’t gotta do nothin’.”

  “What did you tell him about the Hammonds last time he was here?”

  “That it weren’t his business. If he gets here this time, though, I’ll have to speak m’ mind on it. I ain’t seen him since I moved over to Rita’s. I offered him to stay out here then, but he wouldn’t. Kinda takes to city life. I ain’t sure why.”

  “Some people like being so close to everything.”

  “It’d make me crazy, thinkin’ that if I dropped a spoon, they’d ’bout feel the rattle next door.”

  I laughed. “It’s not so bad.”

  “Sure ’nough. That’s why you love it here so well.” She looked up at me and nodded her head good and slow. “You got dirt and weeds and berry patch in your blood, Juli Wortham. You wasn’t meant for no city! Now blow out the candle and get to bed. Tomorrow won’t be waitin’ on nothin’.”

  Too tired to argue, I waited till she was lying down again with her pretty old patch quilt up to her elbows. Then I leaned over and blew out the candle. There was still enough light from the window that I could see the smoke curling like a wisp of cloud toward heaven.

  “Good night, Emma.”

  “Good night. Can you make a good milk gravy?”

  I stopped by the doorway. “I think I can try.”

  “Well, that’s what I want tomorrow, even if I ain’t got sausage. We still got some canned pork?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’ll do. Pipin’ hot on some biscuits, it’ll be fine as anything. ’Cept strawberries, a’ course. Ain’t no beatin’ them.”

  There was no need for a reply. I went to the bucket of water in the kitchen for a drink and thought I heard her slow breath of sleep before I got past her room again to go upstairs. Bone weary, I made my way in the dark to our hard box-spring bed and I laid myself down. I doubt even two minutes passed before I went to sleep.

  Old Jack the rooster woke me up the next morning before I was ready to hear him. First thing I thought of was that tiny baby over at the neighbor’s place, and nine more youngsters, all sizes, every one of them dirty and needing their next meal. But George always put food on the table. Wilametta had assured me of that. And I’d best get to thinking about my own business.

  The sun was just coming up. I needed to milk Lula Bell and start on Emma’s biscuits and gravy. Sam was up too, and went straight out to the barn to check the chair over completely before Emma began stirring.

  Robert woke early and was nearly beside himself, being privy to such a surprise. But Emma slept later than usual, and he could hardly contain his impatience.

  “Do I have to go to school today, Mom?” he asked, his eyes gleaming.

  “I think you should. There’s no real reason not to.”

  “I want to see Emma get a look at that chair! If she’s not up, can I wait?”

  “I think she’ll be up. Take the bucket, Robby, and get me some fresh water.”

  Lula Bell was doing her best, but there wasn’t milk enough to give both children the morning glassful I wanted them to have and still have plenty for the gravy. So I opened some of the canned milk that came from Rita McPiery’s church to make up the difference.

  Robert came back in with the dripping bucket and immediately downed half his milk. Pretty soon Sarah was up and asking for milk too, the way she did every morning now that we had a cow. I was feeling rich just thinking on what Sam had done for Emma. Being angry at him had been so foolish. We were blessed. And, like Robert, I could scarcely wait to pass it on.

  The biscuits were almost done, and the gravy was waiting by the time Emma got up, but she wasn’t even hungry. She made her way to the sitting room to read her Bible by the big window. Robert ran outside to get Sam.

  “You don’t have to wait breakfast for me,” Emma said. “Takes awhile sometimes to get up an appetite. You go ahead.”

  Just then Sam walked into the house, positively beaming. “Emma, it’s a beautiful day. I’d like to take you for a walk.”

  She looked up real slow, like she was wondering if he’d lost his mind. “I believe I’ll just stay here, if you don’t mind. I ain’t no flower to be flittin’ around with.”

  Of course, Sam wasn’t deterred in the slightest. “I thought you might want to get out to your husband’s grave, ma’am, since you haven’t been in all this time.”

  She looked from him to me and then to Robert, and must have thought it an odd thing to be smiling over. “What in the world are you all so anxious about it for? You got somethin’ hid in the sugar bowl, that’s what it is! Out with it, one of ya!”

  Sarah looked at me in surprise, but Robert looked at his father. “Don’t tell her,” he said. “You gotta show her.”

  “We made you something,” Sam said with a voice so quiet and low that it seemed to be coming from far away. Before Emma could say another word, he laid her Bible aside, picked her up, and carried her toward the door.

  “There ain’t no fixin’ that wagon,” she proclaimed, trying to figure us out. “Willard told me so. You’d have to replace two a’ them wheels an’ one whole axle. And you ain’t gone an’ done that.”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

  Robert and Sarah and I followed on Sam’s heels as he took Emma to the porch. And they didn’t have to go a step farther. She saw it the second we were out the door. Sam had pulled the wheelchair out of the barn and set it on the stone path in front of the garden. Nobody spoke.

  Sarah was the first to move, suddenly jumping off the porch and running for the chair. Before anyone could stop her, she was up on it, leaned back in the seat.

  “I like this, Daddy. Will it go really fast?”

  “It’s not for you, pumpkin,” Sam said. “It’s for Emma.”

  He set Emma down on the porch steps and went to wheel it closer. Sarah got down to help him push. Emma didn’t say a word. I couldn’t think of a thing to say either. Emma just looked at me, and then at the chair again. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if she was happy or not. She had a look almost like hurt about her, and I thought perhaps it was a hard thing to be reminded of your limitations.

  But when I saw the tears filling her eyes and just hanging there like a mist, I put my arm around her. Sam wheeled the chair right in front of her and turned it around so she could see the wheels in back.

  “Julia, dear,” she said finally. “Ain’t you got biscuits cooked? I do s’pose we’re gonna need full bellies ’fore we go on an outing.”

  The tears were now streaming down her face. Sam and I didn’t quite know how to respond.

  But Robert stepped down, very gently took Emma’s hand, and patted it in the tenderest gesture I’d ever seen from him. “Do you like it, Emma? We care an awful lot for you, ma’am. I’m glad you like us like family. Dad worked real hard on this. I just knew he could do it, and he did.”

  Emma pulled him toward her so quickly that Robert was startled in the midst of her hug. “He did indeed,” she said. “An’ you’re better’n family.”

  When Emma finally let Robert go, she looked up at Samuel, and my eyes blurred with tears before either of them spoke.

  “You even look just a touch like Warren,” she said, slow and solemn. “Kinda tall an’ brown like him.”

  “I would have liked to meet him,” Sam said. “I’ve heard he was a fine man.”

  Emma smiled. “He’d like this, he would. Just the sort of thing he’d do. He pulled a dog ’round here one time in a little wagon after it got its leg broke. Crazy thing went chasin’ after an automobile. Wish I could show you that wagon, but I ain’t got it no more. Gave it to Philip Cameron’s boy.”

  Sam nodded. “He sounds like a wonderful person.”

  “He was.” She laughed a little and then wiped her eyes with one sleeve. “You know, he kep’ a chick in his room once for three da
ys after a cat got after it! Buried it real decent too. You never seen the like. I was plain sure he was gonna be a preacher one day.”

  She looked down at her hands and then at Sarah and Robert. “Listen to me,” she said, wiping at her tears again. “Don’t I sound jus’ like an ol’ woman, talkin’ about them times? We got the whole day ahead! Robert, son, I wouldn’t be no more surprised to find you a preacher one day than to see the sun risin’ tomorrow mornin’! You got such a good heart, and that’s what it takes. We’ll go out and see Willard, all right. But you’d best go to school, ’cause you’re gonna need that ejication.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at me with a measure of disappointment but didn’t begin to argue.

  “What about me?” Sarah asked immediately. “Can I go when you go for a ride?”

  “Well. I s’pose I’ll leave that up to your mama.”

  We all ate biscuits with gravy, except Sarah, who wanted butter and cinnamon on hers. But it was clear that Emma was not impressed with my gravy that morning.

  “Don’t you worry, Juli,” she told me gently. “Most of what you’ve cooked’s been right passable so far. I’ll learn you the gravy one of these days.”

  I took a chunk of the pork, put it on a biscuit, and wrapped it in paper for Robert’s lunch. He tied it with string himself. “What would you think,” he asked me, “if I brought a chick in the house sometime like Emma’s son did?”

  Emma looked like she couldn’t make up her mind whether to laugh or cry. “Willard done that once too, when we was kids!” she said. “Had his chick right in here by the stove. His mama like to throwed a fit! But he done it for me, ’cause I was so upset ’bout it fallin’ in a fresh-dug posthole. I reckon I loved him clear back then, ’cause he fished it up for me with a stick and a string. We wasn’t but ’bout seven years old.”

  “I think he’d like you rememberin’ stuff like that,”

  Robert told her.

  “I reckon he would.” She patted his arm, and he gave her another hug before leaving for school.

  I let Sarah run outside to pick some flowers, and before she got back, Emma had asked me to let Sarah go along to the grave. “Are you comin’, Juli?” she asked me then, and I didn’t know how to answer. I’d talked to Emma a lot more than Sam had, but it seemed that there was something special going on between them today. Maybe it would do them good to share this adventure with no one but a five-year-old flower carrier.

  Emma understood that better than I expected her to. She asked me to get her hat and canes. She’d walk to the chair, she said, and let Sam do the work from there.

  “I never seen such a contraption. But if he’s handy enough to make it, I can sit in it.”

  She looked so beautiful, sitting in the chair, wearing her big straw hat and a smile on her face. She gave Sammy’s hand a kiss and told him she’d never heard of anyone doing such a thing for someone before.

  It was hard pushing once they got off the stones, I could tell that, but I knew Sam would never let on. They moved up the little hill toward the timber and turned back and waved.

  Emma looked so happy. But the worries surfaced in me again. She’d told me just yesterday that after she saw the grave she could die. And she’d already made a will and told me where it was.

  No, I told myself. She’ll be just fine. She wants to see Albert. It was easy to wish that he’d be long years in coming, if he ever came at all.

  I saw them go into the trees and out of sight, with Sarah dancing around them like a fairy. How would she react, I wondered, to the grief that was bound to come over Emma when she reached the grave? Maybe it was too much for a five-year-old to see. Perhaps I should have gone. Or kept Sarah with me. But Emma had accepted things just this way, as if they were no more than right.

  I went back inside to clean up the kitchen, and then busied myself in the strawberry patch, pulling up henbit and picking some more ripe berries.

  I was just about done when I heard a motorcar off in the distance. Before I could think anything about it, the big old rooster went tearing across the garden patch and out to the barn.

  “What’s got into you?” I called. I set the strawberries down by the well and went to take a look. There was nothing I could see by the chicken coop, no reason for him to run away like that when inside were all his ladies and all he could want.

  “Crazy chicken,” I called out. “I suppose you’ll want me to help you back in again soon!”

  Jack gave a squawk, and I realized that the car sound was much closer. I turned just in time to see a shiny coupe at the base of Emma’s lane. Driving in.

  A wave of anxiety dashed over me. What if it’s Albert? What if he’s mad as a hatter over Miss Hazel’s bitter words? What can I possibly say?

  I forgot all about the rooster and the strawberries and just watched the black car come up slowly and park beneath a leaning sweet gum tree. Only one man sat inside. All I could tell was that he was wearing a short derby and seemed to be studying me before he even got out of the car.

  I could’ve kicked myself for not going with Sam and Emma. They were traipsing over the timber, by now surely at the side of the grave. I wiped my hands on my apron and wondered if my hair was an awful mess.There was nothing more I could do but pray I wouldn’t say something stupid.

  Finally the man stepped out of his car, still looking at me. Whoever he was, he was tall and dressed fancier than most of the people I’d seen around Dearing. He hesitated at first, looking around, and then quickly moved toward me.

  “I’m looking for Emma Graham,” he called out rather gruffly.

  “She’ll be back in a little while,” I told him, trying to sound friendly. “Can I get you a cup of tea while you wait?”

  He looked angered at my suggestion. “Where’s she gone?”

  “Out to her husband’s grave, sir. She hasn’t been in quite a while. They shouldn’t be gone long.”

  He glanced toward the house and then back at me with a frown, this time looking me over from head to foot. “Mrs. Wortham, isn’t it?”

  His tone was harsh; there was no doubt that he was angry. Whoever he was, he looked big and fierce and mad enough to be dangerous.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, the words almost stuck in my throat.

  “Your husband took her clear out in the woods, then.

  In her condition.”

  He was so abrupt it set my knees to shaking. “Yes, but—”

  “If you’ve hurt her in any way, I’ll have the sheriff out here so fast it’ll make your head spin! You’ll be sorry you ever set foot on this farm!”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Samuel

  Emma sat a long time, gazing down at the flowers we’d placed among the weeds in front of Willard’s grave.

  Sarah looked up at me, waiting for one of us to say something, but we didn’t.

  When she was finally ready to move on, Emma leaned down and arranged the flowers just so, taking up a handful of them to lay on top of the stone.

  “He was a fine husband,” she said. “Never did carry on the way some do. Never drunk nothin’ he couldn’t feel free to share with the preacher.”

  “That was a real blessing,” I told her, thinking of my father coming home so drunk that he’d fall on the floor before making it to bed. And after him came a stepfather who wasn’t much better. Liquor bottles lined the dresser in their room, and I hated it, knowing even as a small child that it shouldn’t have to be that way.

  “I know you ain’t Warren, Samuel,” Emma said in a quiet voice. “I don’t want nobody thinkin’ I’ve lost track a’ m’ senses. But you’re what the Lord’s brung me, do you understand? I want you to be same as a son, you hear?”

  I just nodded my head, thinking it was no time to argue with however she chose to think of me, or whatever she wanted to call me. I could serve her needs and be happy doing it. And she was probably right about the Lord sending us—he certainly hadn’t led us anywhere else.

  “We should be gettin’
back,” she suggested. “I’m gettin’ mighty tired. You done a fine job on this chair. But the ground sure is rough.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Emma.” I wished there was something I could do about that, but, of course, there wasn’t. Pushing the chair was much harder than I’d anticipated, especially over grass and rocks and hills. But she’d hung on and didn’t say a word of complaint.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice even quieter. “I’ve really wanted t’ come out here all along.”

  “I thought so.”

  We wheeled on over crevices and channels I hadn’t noticed when I was out here with just Juli and the kids. We had to stop every few seconds just to get one of the wheels loose to roll again.

  “It’ll be easier in town,” she assured me. “Won’t that be somethin’, ever’body gawkin’ at me in this here thing! You couldn’t get me up the stairs of the church, though, I don’t s’pose.”

  “I’ll carry you, like we did before. And then carry this in too. If you want it in.”

  “We’ll have t’ bring it ’least once,” she determined. “So they can see what you made me. After that, it won’t matter. Don’t need no wheels to sit in church.”

  As we headed back toward the house, Sarah stopped to pick some of every wildflower she could find. It wasn’t hard for her to keep up, though, as slow as we were going. She would slip a few yards behind, then come running back with a handful of blooms to deposit carefully in Emma’s lap.

  Each time Sarah brought more flowers, Emma thanked her and gathered them all in a little heap in the apron she’d brought along. Before long, she was singing a hymn I couldn’t remember the name of. All the bumps and jostles of that chair moving over the uneven ground made the song a challenge, and several times Emma’s voice fell off awhile as we bumped our way over something in particular. But she always started back up again, and she kept up the song the rest of the way home.

  By the time we reached the cleared area along the fence line, I was sweating down to my toes. This business was harder work than anything I’d done in a long time, but I wouldn’t stop, not for a minute. And if she’d said she wanted to go back to the grave, I would have turned right around.